Juan Ponce de Leon would have probably been delighted with the price that Christie's of New York hopes to get for one of his letters when it goes to auction in a few days (Record story, June 11, 2003). In a 1602 petition Ponce's great-grandson bemoaned that the early explorer's expenditures for discovery left his widow and his heirs with little money.

The St. Augustine Historical Society Library has a microfilm copy of the original petition made to the king of Spain by great-grandson Perafan de Ribera. He requested that the king compensate him for the hardships and financial losses suffered by his family for four generations.

Ribera recited how his great-grandfather was among the first Europeans to reach the Indies (western hemisphere), sailing with Christopher Columbus. He noted that Ponce later founded a settlement on San Juan de Puerto Rico, as the island was first called. He reminded that Ponce was among the first to reach La Florida Tierra Firme (on the mainland).

During a later trip to the Florida peninsula, Ponce de Leon was wounded and sailed to Havana on the island of Fernandina (the early Spanish name for Cuba), where he died.

In that petition written 80 years after Ponce's first visit to Florida, Ribera recounted that Ponce de Leon "spent his fortune in service to His Majesty and left his descendants without funds." Among Ponce's survivors was his daughter Maria Ponce de Leon, grandmother of Ribera. Her husband, daughter's husband, and her grandson (Ribera himself) also expended their energy and fortunes on behalf of the crown in discovering and "pacifying Indians" in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

In those days awards or grants from the crown were seldom in cash. Spanish royalty rewarded with land or services. Ribera requested that his reward be two thousand pesos of income from mines and the use of Indian laborers for two successive lifetimes. Rewards for the lifetime of the petitioner and descendants for one or two lifetimes were common in St. Augustine, like the rest of the Spanish empire.